Eshoo Promises Unlicensed Interests to Keep Championing Their Cause on Hill
SILICON VALLEY -- Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., promised to keep fighting to make spectrum available for unlicensed broadband uses. In a brief recorded message to a conference Wednesday at Stanford University about unlicensed, Eshoo took credit for provisions in the recently enacted spectrum law allowing “the FCC to preserve existing white spaces” and to use for unlicensed purposes some frequencies to be given up by broadcasters. The “future of unlicensed spectrum” had been “called in question” in the legislation’s creation, she said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Eshoo emphasized economic opportunities from the development and use of advanced applications in unlicensed spectrum for healthcare, education, energy and other purposes. Her district covers much of Silicon Valley, and she’s the ranking member of the House Communication Subcommittee.
Unlicensed is “turning out to be … perhaps the most significant” side of the strategy for adding wireless capacity laid out in the FCC National Broadband Plan, said Blair Levin, who oversaw development of the plan. The explosion in tablet use means the most promising use of wireless broadband is turning out to be nomadic -- stationary activity from place to place -- rather than mobile, he said. “It’s not about voice any more, or that kind of mobility,” Levin said, making unlicensed spectrum all the more relevant. He’s the executive director of Gig.U, a broadband-development effort centered on university networks, and an adviser to Republic Wireless, a low-priced service provider using unlicensed technology.
Time Warner Cable has held “discussions with a number of carriers” about gaining the use of its Wi-Fi network, “but nothing that’s been finalized,” said Rob Cerbone, vice president-wireless product management. He was answering a question about a contention by Sprint Nextel to the FCC concerning the cable-Verizon Wireless deals that the provider needs access to cable Wi-Fi. Nothing in the agreements “precludes anybody from having access to those networks,” Cerbone said. It’s “in my interests” for “as many people as can hop on that network” at Time Warner Cable do so, he said. The company’s multi-sided Wi-Fi efforts, featuring build-out of thousands of hotspots in Los Angeles this year, are “validating our assumptions that this can be a powerful retention benefit,” reducing customer churn, Cerbone said.
Offloading cellular traffic to Wi-Fi is “changing the dynamics in that happy oligarchy” of telcos and cable providers, said Rolf de Vegt, who works in new markets and technologies at Cisco. “It provides a great user experience” but it also creates tensions, he said. Getting into Wi-Fi is more straightforward for cable companies, for which the technology is a straight “value add,” Cerbone said, than for carriers with their own wireless networks. Devicescape, which has cobbled together an international virtual Wi-Fi network from 8 million hotspots screened for quality, has supported offload of 20-50 percent of cellular traffic in places, “a truly spectacular, amazing number that we never expected,” said CEO Dave Fraser.